The internet continues to expand as a source of information gathering, information distribution, and a marketplace for consumer goods. Websites, computer desktops, and other computer applications that were once composed of static or fixed content, now provide live content to readers. Feeds can be incorporated into a user interface, either manually, by software, or through the use of online services, to provide relevant and up-to-date information, in the form of links, short textual excerpts, or a combination of both. Generally, a feed is created based on manual selection, a keyword search of content, constructed rules, or automated algorithms. The result is feed content consisting of a group of links, news headlines, podcasts, weblogs, etc.
A powerful feature of a feed is that it provides relevant data, such as news data, to a person who is a consumer of the content of the feed. The feed generally represents current content. When new content is added to a feed, the old content is removed. Thus, the user sees current information. Because of the ability to provide up-to-date information, feeds are typically incorporated into other content such as web sites, newsletters, weblogs, intranets, applications, kiosks, phones, set top boxes (i.e., cable television), etc. However, one significant limitation of a feed is that the content of the feed is determined in advance.
One attempt to overcome the limitation of predetermined feed content is contextualized advertising. In contextualized advertising, a website may decide to include feeds that provide advertisements to the website, usually in the form of banner ads, pop-ups, advertisement frames, etc. The contextualized advertisement feeds include the ability to analyze the content of a website and provide an advertisement relevant to the content currently being supplied by the website.
A drawback to contextualized advertisements is the possibility of displaying an inappropriate or unwanted advertisement on a website. If a website publishes an article harshly criticizing a major airline, analysis of the content by a contextualized advertisement service may pick up on references to the airline in the article. According to the discussion above, a contextualized advertisement server might then insert an advertisement for that airline into the website. However, supplying an advertisement for the airline to a website criticizing the airline would neither be relevant nor appropriate. The problem described above would be true for any server that is attempting to add contextualized advertisements to a user interface.
Another area of great interest on the internet is in the expansion and growth of internet auctions. An internet auction is generally facilitated by an auction host that provides sellers a marketplace to offer their goods for sale. The auction host also allows buyers to bid on the goods over a predetermined period of time. At the conclusion of the auction, the highest bidder wins, which can result in great financial savings to the buyer. Because of the explosion in popularity of internet auctions, there are currently millions of items for sale on auction hosts. However, because of the staggering number of items for sale in internet auctions, it can be difficult for a potential buyer to locate a specific item. Furthermore, a buyer may not be aware of similar but equally relevant items to an item the user is currently searching for.
Another drawback of the current state of internet auctions is that while the auction is underway, a potential buyer may not be fully apprised of the current state of the auction. Unless the buyer sets up a messaging service or periodically navigates to an auction host, the buyer may miss critical updates to the auction, such as the current bid, how much time is left in an auction, whether a reserve price has been met, etc. These critical pieces of information often determine the outcome of an auction and the success or failure of a potential buyer in winning an auction and acquiring the desired goods.